Some have quietly or openly been hoping the GM could cash-in on the misery of Japanese brands in China. It’s not happening. Sales across all of GM’s Chinese joint ventures were up a marginal 1.7 percent in September while sales of German marques received a boost.

GM China September 2012

Sept ’12

YoY

9months

YoY

GM China

244,266

1.7%

2,081,812

10.0%

Shanghai GM

120,010

3.7%

966,832

6.7%

Chevrolet

56,166

3.2%

509,739

Buick

62,120

-1.8%

462,471

Cadillac

2,585

-8.3%

21,322

SAIC-GM-Wuling

119,510

0.4%

1,070,131

13.7%

Wuling

109,502

-2.5%

990,190

Baojun

9,147

370.3%

?

FAW-GM

4,581

-5.0%

41,249

1.4%

Black: Company data. Blue: TTAC calculation from archive data.

Sales of GM’s Buick brand dropped 1.8 percent, Cadillac sales are down 8.3 percent. Chevrolet, up 3.2 percent did all the heavy lifting. The Sail (18,786 units), and the Cruze, (18,338 units) made up for the bulk of Chevrolet sales.

According to Reuters, “GM appears to have missed an opportunity to step into the gap left by Toyota, Honda, and Nissan, whose sales have fallen as a result of an outbreak of anti-Japanese sentiment in China.”

“German and Korean players are the biggest beneficiaries from the woes of the Japanese as they are much more competitive in the SUV segment,” John Zeng, Asia Pacific director for industry consultancy LMC Automotive, told Reuters.

I’m just doing the math. If SGM is indeed up 3.7%, then are there other brands that aren’t listed under SGM in your table? Because none of Buick, Chevy and Cadillac are up more than 3.7% so their wieghted average can’t be 3.7%. By using a weighted average, those three’s combined sales would be up 0.3% not 3.7%.

Furthermore, after doing the calcs, it is strange that the total of the three brands listed under SGM comes to 120,871, not 120,010. maybe that’s close enough for Chinese manufacturing…

I can’t help but think this is related to the fact that US manufacturers can’t sell vehicles in Japan.

Is there a large portion of the population in China with similar tastes to the Japanese?

I think the new fusion and the ATS are good moves by detroit, let’s see if they can keep this up. I also think the XTS is a mistake of a vehicle and Cadillac should never have bothered. Just get the next RWD luxo car in instead.